Supporting the company’s digital
strategy is an Oracle
Commerce platform first installed in 2006 and upgraded in 2013. Internet Retailer’s Mark Brohandetailed
the company’s tech journey as they moved from “spaghetti junction” to a
sophisticated platform that increased conversion rates, is readily updated and
optimizes for mobile.

Given the back story, it’s no
surprise the room was packed when Shop Direct e-Commerce director Jonathan Wall appeared on the
Executive Strategies track at the 2014 Internet Retailer Conference and
Exposition (IRCE) in Chicago. Wall described a transformation that began
with new leadership, preserved the company’s core customer focus and introduced
a culture of innovation.

Central to its success, said Wall,
is a major shift to a “fast
fail” environment that looks to triple the frequency at which
merchandising, promotion, design features and functionality are tested and tweaked
to meet changing customer expectations. The
testing happens in a new
user experience lab at the head office located in Speke, Liverpool.

“Data is key to what we do as a
business,” said Wall. “The data is
coming in quickly and driving a rapid pace of change. We look at eye tracking, live session replays
and run quantitative testing to achieve continuous change.”

It’s a big switch from a culture
in which long, expensive print cycles dictated a risk-averse culture. When merchandising was tethered to print
cycles, an ineffective promotion or price change could hurt revenue for an
entire season until the next edition printed and made it into the hands of
customers.

Not long ago, one such test
resulted in a change that drives as many as 3.3 million incremental sales in a
year. Most important, said Wall, is that
the aggressive test environment drives continual change across its commerce
business. This appetite for innovation
enables Shop Direct to be in continuous touch with shopper preferences, keeping
the site fresh and ever improving sales.

It’s a dynamic that keeps the
company well connected with customers. In 2010, a 3% slice of Shop Direct’s online traffic was mobile but the
company saw what was coming. Now more
than 60% of its customers online sessions are via mobile devices, a testament
to Shop Direct’s focus on encouraging mobile and enabling an Omni-channel
approach.

“The turning point was we were
able to show brand directors that these customers were converting at about half
the rate of those shopping from a desktop. We knew it was the right thing to do,” said Wall.

It’s clear that Shop Direct is not
pausing to gaze at success. The company continues to move forward and among its
endeavors is the art of personalizing each customer’s shopping experience. It’s a work in progress, according to Wall.

“We believe personalization is
having a real time engine that uses real live customer data. We have lots of behavioral data, financial
data, buying data. We know what product
to merchandise to them. We aren’t
betting the farm on (personalization) but we are certainly betting the garden
shed.”